The Chinese Enigma: Impacts of WTO Accession Upon Canadian and U.S. Exports and Imports

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is an important milestone in the integration of this nation into the world economy. Substantial reduction in trade barriers by China, one of the world's largest and most rapidly growing economies, is expected to have a significant impact, both on China itself and on the global economy. In assessing likely impacts on trade between China and North America of China joining the WTO, a priori one might expect new opportunities for China in labor intensive activities/products, while for the United States and for Canada one might expect added export market opportunities, as China grows, in activities/products that require land, resources and capital. However, the extent to which China and its trading partners will benefit from China's increasing integration into the global economy will largely depend on the internal changes in policy and infrastructure that may be adopted by China. China has embarked on a process of economic reform, but the speed and extent to which this continues to be pursued will affect this nation's ability to capitalize on its comparative advantages and to meet new challenges that are associated with the opportunities of access to a larger market. The difficulty of forecasting such internal changes means that China continues to be a major source of uncertainty in projecting world markets and trade flows. This uncertainty is particularly evident for trade in agricultural products     

How useful are signals? A micro-structure analysis

We analyze how the market processes a signaling event by studying a sample of self-tender offers, events often viewed as signals of firm value. By examining changes in the degree of informed trading, we find asymmetric information costs fall at announcement, remain low throughout the event, and increase at offer expiration. By one month following expiration, informed trading returns to a level not significantly different from that prior to the offer. Higher risk firms have significantly larger declines in information asymmetry during the offer. Increases in information asymmetry persist one month following expiration for firms with lower pre-offer informed trading. (JEL G14, G32)     

Unemployment duration and the interactions between unemployment insurance and social assistance

Existing studies suggest that reforms that reduce the generosity of the unemployment benefits should lower unemployment. Despite the large number of such reforms implemented in Europe in the past decades, evidence from various data sources shows very little correlation with the evolution of unemployment. This paper suggests that the scant success of these labour market reforms can be explained by the interactions between unemployment insurance and other social assistance programmes. Evidence from the European Community Household Panel shows that recipients of unemployment insurance who are also eligible for other welfare schemes are indeed less sensitive to changes in the level and the duration of their benefits.     

Considerazioni generali sull’impostazione Bayesiana di problemi non parametrici. Le medie associative nel contesto del processo aleatorio di Dirichlet parte II

Nei problemi statistici non parametrici la conoscenza della distribuzione iniziale e finale di una generica media associativa si manifesta particolarmente utile. Se la classe delle possibili funzioni di ripartizione scelte per descrivere un fenomeno è retta da un processo di Dirichlet nel senso precisato in D. M. Cifarelli — E. Regazzini (1979), è possibile pervenire ad una rappresentazione esplicita della distribuzione iniziale e ad una relazione ricorrente per il calcolo della distribuzione finale di una generica media associativa, secondo quanto si dimostra in questo lavoro. Lavoro eseguito nell’ambito G.N..F.A. del C.N.R.. A D.M. Cifarelli sono dovuti: i Lemmi 1, 4, i Teoremi 1, 2 ed il numero 3. Ad E. Regazzini sono dovuti: i Lemmi 2, 3, 7, il Teorema 3, il numero 2.3 e le Osservazioni 1, 2. La Parte I è stata pubblicata in questo periodico Anno 2°, Fasc. 1°.     

An analysis of environmental sustainability in small & medium‐sized enterprises: Patterns and trends

One of the greatest challenges facing the world today is climate change. The need to consistently advance with environmentally sustainable practices in today's businesses is crucial, and businesses are demanded to be more environmentally sustainable every day. This study conducts an analysis of the literature on small and medium‐sized enterprises' (SMEs) environmental sustainability by carefully examining 122 studies from 58 journals published from 2013 to 2019. We investigate the trends in drivers and barriers of sustainability adoption to inform both SMEs managers and policymakers. Our results also classify the reviewed studies on the basis of their methodologies and show the distribution of studies across industry sectors and locations in order to set directions for future research on sustainability practices of SMEs.     

An integrated algorithm for three-way compositional data

Quality & Quantity - Compositional data with a tridimensional structure are not uncommon in social sciences. The CANDECOMP/PARAFAC model is one of the most adequate techniques for modeling...     

Are Mainstream and Heterodox Economists Different? An Empirical Analysis

We explore the differences between mainstream and heterodox economists based on the responses to a questionnaire from a representative sample of Italian economists. Using different definitions for mainstream and heterodox economics, we compare the individual and academic characteristics of the economists belonging to these groups. We measure the within and between disagreement for each group and we test whether belonging to one or the other group predicts differences in economists' opinions on economic policy. Results show that: 1) mainstream and heterodox economists differ as to individual and academic characteristics and political views; 2) the disagreement within heterodox economics is lower than within mainstream economics; 3) some of commonly used ways of grouping heterodox and mainstream schools of thought have little explicative power in relation to individual opinions; 4) on critical economic policies, the opinions of heterodox and mainstream economists are significantly different even after controlling for a number of individual characteristics, including political opinions.     

Challenges in approximating the Black and Scholes call formula with hyperbolic tangents

Decisions in Economics and Finance - In this paper, we introduce the concept of standardized call function and we obtain a new approximating formula for the Black and Scholes call function through...     

The impact of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 repo ‘safe harbor’ provisions on investors

ABSTRACT

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005 significantly expanded the exemptions from the normal workings of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Using a large sample of U.S. banks, we study investors’ reaction to news about the promulgation of the BAPCPA repo ‘safe harbor’ provisions and the influence extending such exemptions to repos collateralized by riskier collateral had on equity market information asymmetry. We find a negative market reaction to news events about the promulgation of BAPCPA, which subsequent cross-sectional analysis suggests is at least partly driven by repo exposure. This finding suggests that investors perceived the increase in finance risk from the extension of the ‘safe harbor’ provisions as dominating the perceived gain from accessing cheaper finance. Further, we find that the promulgation of BAPCPA gave rise to increased information asymmetry for banks with repo exposure.     

Does the recent success of some OECD countries in lowering their unemployment rates lie in the clever design of their labor market reforms?

In recent years some OECD countries were successful in loweringthe unemployment rate substantially while other countries werenot. In this paper we investigate to what extent successfulcountries implemented a comprehensive set of institutional reforms.We present a theoretical framework to investigate the relationshipbetween unemployment and labor market institutions (LMI) suchas labor taxes, unemployment benefits, employment protection,union bargaining power and (de)centralization of bargaining.In our empirical analysis of data over the period 1960–99of 17 OECD countries we show that particular combinations ofLMI are responsible for low unemployment rates.